May 2008

The Day You Became A Better Writer

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.

Comments

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Re: Eugene's comment
I don't think anyone knows for sure how our brains are wired by default, but SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) is not specific to Western languages. Chinese (by which I include all Chinese dialects) can hardly be more different from Germanic/Romance languages, and yet it uses SVO. If Chomsky is correct about universal grammar, it is not impossible that our brains have a slight preference for SVO, since Creole languages often uses SVO. (These are grammatic languages made up by children whose parents speak almost grammarless pidgins.)

Correction: Not 'all' brains think this way, as is your presumption. Sure, brains tutored under a language where subject comes before verb in the SVO (subject, verb, in/direct object) makes more sense to you, and many other's (including myself) have been raised under Germanic and Romantic derived languages.

This is merely an illusion. Native speakers of Japanese function primarily in a SOV format (subject object verb). To new speakers of English (from Japanese at least), "The boy the ball hits" would be an easier and more comfortable translation (needing only the words for verification, and no need to reverse the word order for comprehension).

Consider Latin (although a dead (nearly, except for college geeks) language) where the placement of the words is generally (and arguably genuinely) arbitrary, wherein the endings of such words designate their position in a grammatical structure. In Latin, you could easily find a sentence, that without rearranging the order of words, states: "the fire in Rome Nero fiddled the burning while was occuring", when the actual sentence should translate as "Nero fiddled while the fire burned Rome." Put into context the designations for sentence structure as well as the prepositions we needlessly add, ("the, in, while, was, etc.") are needless , the 1 or 2 letter endings which put such nouns, verbs, and objects (direct, or indirect) in their particular designations, make way for both their function in the statement, as well as how the subject is affecting them (to, from, with, against, around, near, using, etc. etc.). Consider this food for thought.

Further, there are African languages which function the same way (as well as Swahili, if I'm remembering my linguistics properly (which is a language very much alive)) where they add grammatical designations (Subject, Object, or Verb) into the middle of the word.

Case in point, Human brains are NOT wired this way, its just a generalized stereotype of how western language (and arguably western upbringing) exemplifies itself.

"I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in 'business writing.'"

The author says he rewrote that opening sentence a dozen times. Maybe 13 is the charm. The main idea is that he "went from being a bad writer to a good writer." That idea should be at the end of the sentence rather than the beginning.

Why? Because most readers of English most of the time expect to find the most important information at the end of the sentence, in the "stress position."

Rewrite: "After taking a one-day course in 'business writing,' I went from being a bad writer to a good writer."

"My Chemistry professors insisted on passive voice in all lab reports."
They do this because they want you to not have a subject. That's the one time you should use passive voice. "The world was destroyed" for example.

"...Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting)."

WOAH! Isn't the ball the object? And the boy the subject? It has been a while since I had English in school but I am pretty sure that is the way it used to shake out....maybe it has changed since I was a boy. Or maybe the 20% not included in this "good writing lesson" is how to use proper English??? Or maybe good writing goes beyond "rules"???

That aside...I do appreciate your insights here...and I think you are amazing at delivery here on your blog! Thanks

Umm, yeah, and if its going out in an email, you will lose 90% of your readers if it extends beyond a single paragraph. The will all say "my brain hurts" and "reading makes me sleepy" like Homer Simpson ODing on valium. Lets face it, when writing, youre better of treating your audience like a bunch of morons. They will appreciate your thoughfulness. Better yet, dont write. Make short video and upload it to youtube with a catchy upbeat tune running in the background.

I do not want to live in a world where all writing is reduced to conveying information. While simple is better for business it would be a great loss to the world of belles lettres if all writers adopted the KISS rule. Of course, not all writers are talented enough and the primary use of language is to convery ideas, but an excellent description, a rich vocabulary, a mastery of syntax and an understanding of rhetoric is a superb gift.

"Here as a boy I walked down every morning, barefoot and bearing a dented billycan. on my way to buy the day's milk from Duignan the dairyman or his stoically cheerful, big-hipped wife. Even though the sun would be long up the night's moist coolness would cling on in the cobbled yard, where hens picked their way with finical steps among hteir onw chalk-and-olive-green droppings. There was always a dog lying tethered under a leaning cart that would eye me measuringly as I went past, teetering on tuptoe so as to keep my heels out of the chicken-merd, and a grimy white cart-horse tht would come and put its head over the half-door of the barn and regard me sidelong with an amused and sceptical eye from under a forelock that was exactly the same murky shade of creamy-white as honeysuckle blossom. I did not like to knock at the farmhouse door, fearing Duignan'smother, a low-sized squarish old party who seemed fitted with a stumpy leg at each corner and who gasped when she breathed and lolled teh pale we polyp of her tongue on her lower lip, and instead I would hang back in the violet shadow of the barn to wait for Duignan or his missus to appear and save me from an encounter with the crone.

"All through the whole of a dull, dark, listless day in the autumn of the year, I had been travelling alone on horseback through a singularily dreary tract of country and, at length, found myself, as the shades of evening wore on, within view of the melancholy House of User."

I like short sentences. I also like long ones. Sometimes, it's nice to take the time to turn a phrase along the lines of "be there or risk being less than well rounded" to spouting a cliche like "be there or be square." That's the key to the famous British understatements like "I found her rather not unattractive."

The advice is not that bad, but I have doubts about the “The boy hit the ball” rather than “The ball was hit by the boy” thing.

You said it’s about brains. It’s not. It’s about how brains are trained, which includes language and culture.

In French, you use much more nouns and much less verbs than in English. And passive sentences (“The ball was hit by the boy”) are far more common. One of the first things you learn when you study French↔English translation is that most “This doesn’t sound quite right” situations can be solved by switching perspective… active↔passive and noun↔verb. It just works. Believe me.